Yesterday I gave a talk at the Zonta Club of Perth‘s Cultural Awareness Day. The day was aimed to ‘foster empathy, friendship and an enhanced understanding of the lives of women that come to Australia as refugees’ but I was there to talk about stories from CASE for Refugees. The stories from the other ladies, though: WOW.

I gasped and bawled.

Catrina Hoang showed us photos from her amazing book Boat People: Personal Stories From the Vietnamese Exodus 1975-1996

She made a pretty important point which is rather relevant to the current issues we’re having here, and that was that asylum seekers do not get into rickety boats and risk death on the high seas for a better life. They are doing it for life. Just life. They risk it all for life. Full stop.

Pretty powerful stuff.

One of things I think is really important in the whole debate about refugees is the fact that so few people really understand why asylum seekers leave their countries. This problem is only magnified but the offshore-processing system where asylum seekers are ‘out of sight & out of mind’ in remote locales around Australia, most often behind razor wire.

All these programs and policies that keep these incredibly vulnerable people isolated from our community (and away from services that they often desperately need) are aimed at appeasing sections of the electorate who are (allegedly) anxious about boat arrivals.

The thing is: people who understand the issues and the stories and the reasons why they have left their homeland are not anxious about the small percentage of asylum seekers that arrive here by boat. Just as no-one (at all!) fears the majority of applicants for protection visas that come here on tourist visas or as students or workers.

That’s why the event today sharing stories and discussing the issues was so heartening.

Speaking of debates and discussions – the Law Society of WA’s Young Lawyers Committee are holding a panel on the asylum seeker debate during Law Week featuring:

I’m all for other people to go off and have weddings and partake in the Matrimonial Industrial Complex, sure, and I adored being a bridesmaid at one of my best friends’ charming wedding last year, but getting hitched is just not for me.

Given my predilection for not being a fan of it all, the hype around Will & Kate’s nuptials has absolutely made my skin crawl. The cost, the ostentation, the irrelevant pomp & ceremony — urgh.

I don’t mean to come off as bitter and horrible (while, admittedly, I am a bit of both). There were a few folks on my twitter stream making comments about ignoring the haters because all weddings are lovely and happy and are beacons of light in a world of suffering.

Guess what? They’re not.

In addition to the fact that same-sex couples can’t proclaim that their love for each other is as valid as a hetero couple, let’s not forget lavender marriages (but we hope these happen less these days…), forced marriages and child brides:

One in seven girls under the age of 15 is married in the developing world. Once a girl becomes trapped in these kinds of marriages, her prospects for educational attainment become severely constrained. That, in turn, has all sorts of negative effects on the health and welfare of her family and the community at large. Breaking that vicious cycle starts with ending child marriage. (UN Foundation)

The other thing that is really vile is the amount of completely unnecessary media coverage over the whole circus.

Congratulations, William and Kate, it is utterly delightful that you found each other, but your lives have absolutely no impact on anything we do and when you get pissed off by the paps chasing you for the rest of your days, you should stop to remember that you had a choice about having a quiet, private ceremony and certainly did not have to let any media organisation broadcast your vows around the world.

And I can’t say anything more about the ridiculous lengths that the media has gone to on this story (did I hear correctly that there were 10,000 people involved in covering this? TEN THOUSAND INTERROBANG) than what Dan Rather said about it:

What bothers me is the hypocrisy. The idea that we can’t afford to throw resources at an important foreign story, but can afford to spend this kind of money on a story like the royal wedding is just plain wrong.

Damn straight.

And now, I shall forever hold my peace. (Or is it ‘piece’? I never know.)

The report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was released in April 1991. In the 20 years since the Royal Commission’s 339 recommendations were handed down, 269 of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters have died while incarcerated.

Along with the deaths in Australia’s immigration detention centres, this loss of life strikes at the heart of any claim we have to be a decent, humane society.

The Aboriginal Legal Service of WA and the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee of WA are holding a public event in Perth on Friday 15 April to mark the anniversary and to demand change – please see here for details.

Munyaradzi Gwisai is a law lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe who has been charged with treason. The government is saying he showed internet videos about the democracy struggle in Egypt to his students. If convicted he faces the death penalty.

While he has been released on bail pending his next court appearance on 20 April, Gwisai testified at an earlier hearing that he and other accused were brutally tortured after their arrest by state security agents.

An event organised by Adele Carles MLA, Melissa Parke MP and Senator Scott Ludlam at the Fremantle Town Hall this week will call for the rule of law and freedom to be restored in Zimbabwe.

I’m just about to start up fourth week at my Dream Job: I’m in the Civil branch at Legal Aid WA and I’m working on a whole range of things from Legal Advice Bureaus and Criminal Injuries Compensation claims to assisting asylum seekers in detention centres get through the hoops DIAC makes them jump through to ‘prove’ that they are genuine refugees.

Because, you know, people who come here on boats are sneakily trying to slip in through the ‘back door’ and jump those sensible and orderly ‘queues’ that exist in war-torn countries MIGHT ACTUALLY BE NASTY FOLK WHO ENJOY EXTREME ADVENTURE HOLIDAYS RIGHT ZOMFG INTERROBANG

The thing that pisses me off the most about the whole dog-whistle ‘debate’ we’re having is that asylum seekers and refugees are talked about, trollumnised on, statistified. They are made into unhumans.

DIAC’s motto is “People: our business”. But it hardly feels like that. My clients each have SEVERAL reference numbers that we need to note on all our correspondence – a client ID, a file number, an application ID, boat ID… Their name (sadly) isn’t enough. The government refers to asylum seekers who arrive by boat as ‘Irregular Maritime Arrivals”. A friend of mine pointed out that it makes these people sound like packages that have been lost in the post.

Rarely do we talk to them or listen to their stories and see them as real men, women and (sadly) children – with hopes and (sadly) many fears and dreams and families.

In my volunteering work at CASE for Refugees and now with LAWA all I do is listening to real stories from real people who have had experiences our subconsciousness couldn’t even process to turn into nightmares.

When Ruddock said recently that unaccompanied minors are coming here as part of a dodgy immigration racket, I just wanted to jump up and down and point to my high-school-aged client whose father and older brother were murdered before they had to flee their homeland. My client’s mother didn’t come with them on the trip here because she stayed with my client’s younger siblings, who couldn’t make such a journey.

If helping that kid to avoid growing up in a war-zone and letting him have a chance to go to school and is a racket, I am damn proud to call myself a gangster.

As Omar Little wisely said on The Wire:

“I’ll do what I can to help y’all. But, the game’s out there, and it’s play or get played. That simple.”

Now. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they’re totally wishing that they could help, but bemoaning that they can’t because they are not human rights lawyers like me. (OMFG. I really am a human rights lawyer now, aren’t I? SQUEE-EFFING-SQUEE, MUTHAZ!!! I MADE IT!!!)

OK: NEWSFLASH! Human rights lawyers only do a teeny-tiny part of this game. We’re just like, the little hoppers on them corners, yo.

The best thing about this here game, is that it’s really easy to play and all’a y’all can be soldiers, aight?

Everyone, every single one of us, all of you peeps at the other end of the internets, no matter what your job, your income, your age, WHAT THE EFF EVER, can take part in supporting asylum-seekers and helping to change a conversation that has been trolling our “lucky” country for far too long.

support ASETTS, which provides services to people who are humanitarian entrants or are from a refugee type background and who have experienced torture or trauma in their country of origin, during their flight to Australia, or while in detention (happens a lot nowadays – #sadsigh); or

“None of us can do everything. All of us can do something. Together we can do a lot.”

And a quick message to all them haters out there: GAME ON, MOLES – we’re coming to talk to you politely and sensibly about Teh Boats and stuff over a cuppa. If you’re nice, we might even give you an ANZAC biccie.

‘There are no differences between men and women here … We are all one hand.’

Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. Yes, that’s right. We’ve been fighting for equity and celebrating incremental achievements for a century.

And as we cover our Twitter profile images with purple Twibbons and go to fancy breakfasts and muse on the insightful (cough) comments made on last night’s IWD-themed Q&A, it occurred to me how important it is that the fight for equity and the celebration of achievements shouldn’t happen on just one day a year. It’s like Valentine’s Day, I reckon — if you’re into the lovey dovey stuff, shouldn’t you celebrate it every day?

Is it because of the F-word?

While I didn’t watch more than 3 minutes of Q& A last night, but I did see my favourite Conservatroll make reference to a straw-poll from which she concluded that ‘young girls are not finding feminism attractive’.

Even if Aunty Jan is right there, I wonder if maybe that could be the case because Tories like her, whose voices are somehow louder and get more airtime, continue to suggest that women and men ARE on equal footing and that women are ‘opting out’ of high-flying careers/board positions because they want to.

‘Feminists’, meanwhile, are painted as being out of touch (and unattractive?) and whining about issues that aren’t problems any more.

Here’s the thing, right: the facts and the stats speak for themselves, but Kate Ellis said it pretty well last night:

… on your question about why are the numbers so low, what’s stopping women, frankly I think it’s not that we need to stick with merit based appointments. We don’t have merit based appointments. If you think we do then you’re effectively saying that there aren’t more than 8.4 per of women out there with merit, which I think is rubbish.

I’m not going to get into the arguments about the structural issues that lead to women to ‘choosing’ to quit their jobs and drop out of the pipeline to leadership positions or the fact that in 2011 our national ‘broadsheet’ splashes on their front page that the Premier of Tasmania is (shock horror) single, or how this country’s Paid ‘Parental’ Leave policy is aimed at letting mother’s bond with their children and forgets that men can be parents too.

I just want to say that there is nothing wrong with being a feminist.

There is nothing hideous with wanting equity and thinking it’s OK for girls to have the same opportunities as boys.

What IS wrong is that Hillary Clinton was told she could never be a trial lawyer because she didn’t have a wife.

What IS hideous is that in some countries girls in their teens have no choice other than to drop out of school and let go of their dreams because their parents are dead, missing, or too poor to look after them so they have to get married.

I think it’s a pity that lots of fathers who would love to have more time with their children feel they can’t ask, because of some mad workplace culture that confines them in some atavistic hunter gatherer mind-set.

I think it’s a pity that when we think about women and work, it’s often about how we can do more work at work, when the other half of the equation – how better to share the work at home – is still so unresolved.

“Choose your spouse wisely,” is what Pru Goward once told me, when dispensing – as she still does – advice on how to “do” family and career.

Can I get a ‘hell yes’?

I worked with a Senior Associate whose husband quit his job to take their gorgeous baby girl to swimming lessons and play groups. HELL YES. And as I’m getting older I’m realising that I’m at that stage were lots of my friends are settling down, getting married, and having little people. Turns out that I know heaps of awesome young couples who are working together to raise their kids. MORE HELL YES.

Gender equity isn’t something that just benefits women. It benefits everyone in our community, and communities around the world. And that’s why everyone in our community needs to work together to get there.